What is Cardiovascular Fitness?
Cardiovascular fitness can be defined simply as your body's ability to get oxygen and blood to the muscles.

• When you do physical activity and your pulse quickens and your breathing gets deeper, you are using your cardiovascular system.
• You can improve your cardiovascular system's efficiency through regular training.
• The short term used when referring to cardiovascular exercise is Cardio.

How much Cardio do I need?
There are a few simple guidelines you can follow when determining how much cardio work you should do. Basically, it all comes down to your goals.

• If you are trying to lose fat, you need to do more cardio than if you are trying to gain weight. For fat loss, three to five times per week at 20 to 40 minutes per session is plenty. Start conservatively if you are just starting training, e.g. three times per week, 20 minutes per session.
• If you are trying to gain weight, you will find that goal easier to achieve if you don't do any cardio at all, though you will still maintain health benefits without much effect on your weight gain if you do light cardio work twice a week for 20 minutes.
• For improving cardiovascular fitness in general, three or four times per week for 20 to 40 minutes per session (depending on your current level of fitness) will yield good results.

Which type of Cardio should I do?
Cardiovascular training, no matter what the exercise, is categorized based on duration and intensity. When you are choosing which type of cardio to do, keep your goals in mind.

• If your goal is to improve your general cardiovascular fitness, do moderate intensity work where you are starting to breathe deeply and you can feel that you are working.
• If your goal is fat loss but you're in poor shape, do low intensity, long duration work such as walking.
• If you want fat loss and you're in reasonably good cardiovascular shape, do the type that burns the most calories, i.e. high-intensity training (explained in detail below).

Maximum heart rate

• Your maximum heart rate (HR max) is the theoretical number of beats per minute that your heart is capable of producing.
• This is found by subtracting your age from 220, e.g. if you're 40 years old,
  220 - 40 = 180 HR max.
• This is simply an estimation, not an absolute limit.
• To measure aerobic exercise intensity, percentage of HR max (%HR max) is often used. If you want to exercise at 60% of your HR max, your heart rate should be, using the example above, around 108 beats per minute.
• Your heart rate is your guide for cardiovascular exercise intensity

Target heart rate
Your Target Heart Rate is the range of heart beats per minute at which you should work at in order to best achieve aerobic fitness. This range is typically between 60% to 80% of your HR max. The bottom end of the scale is best for low intensity training while the top end is for high intensity training.


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